Introduction to CFD - Part V : Solution

Once the preprocessing is done, means once we have good mesh, we can import the mesh in specific solver are solve the desired governing equations. This step is called as solution step.

The tools which take mesh as input and carryout the solution of selected governing equations are called as solvers.

Selecting the appropriate solvers :

Pressure based or density based

Selecting the mathematical equations to be solved :

Steady state or unsteady state equations

Compressible of incompressible equations

Laminar or turbulent flow equations

Energy equation

Multiphase flow equations

Radiation equations

And many more based on the physics you want to simulate

Selecting the material properties :

Fluid Material (Water, air etc…)

Solid Material (Copper, Aluminum etc…)

Assigning appropriate boundary conditions :

Inlet Boundary:

Example 1 : Velocity Inlet with 10 m/s and normal to boundary

Example 2: Total pressure at inlet = 101325 Pa (Gauge)

Example 3: Mass flow rate at inlet = 12 Kg/s

Outlet Boundary

Example 1 : Pressure at outlet = 0 (Gauge)

Example 2 : Mass flow at outlet = 10.2 Kg/s

Example 3 : 50 % flow is going out of the outlet

Wall Boundary

Example 1 : Adiabatic and no slip boundary

Example 2 : Constant temperature 400 K and no slip boundary

Fluid domain conditions

Example 1 : Working media is air and domain is rotating with 1000 rpm

Example 2: Working media is water

Solid domain conditions

Example 1 : Heat generation rate in solid = 20 W/m3

Any many more depending on the problem that you are simulating

Selecting the Solutions controls :

Selecting discritization schemes

Example : 1st order for pressure and 2nd order for density

Selecting under relaxation factors

Selecting pressure correction methods

SIMPLE/SIMPLEC/PISO

Selecting the CFL number

Providing the initial guess of the solution

Putting some monitors for getting idea about if my solution is converged or not

Carrying out the solution

You may not be in position to appreciate most of the above steps. But all the above steps will be explained in detail in chapters to come. You will come to know the meaning and importance of each and every step written above but the only conditions is you should keep on reading. The overall idea of task carried out in solver is to solve the selected set of equations with specified boundary conditions for selected materials using selected numerical schemes

The type of numerical scheme and solution strategy will depend on which type of equations we will be solving, which type of boundary conditions we will be using and what type of geometry is involved in the problem.

Following chart will give an overall idea about inputs needed for any solver

The Author

Vijay is COO and Co-Founder of CCTech & LearnCAx. Vijay's major contribution in professional career is growing CCTech from team of two people to group of 30 technologists and now CCTech is a preferred partner to many engineering industries. At CCTech, Vijay look after business development for CFD division and a member of technical review committee.

Since beginning of Vijay's professional career, he has passion for education. At CCTech, he conceptualized a unique training program on CFD which was then taken by more than 500 students and most of them are now working as CFD analyst in industry. This program is now considered as benchmark for classroom training. The same passion caused birth of LearnCAx, an online education brand of CCTech. LearnCAx is first MOOC platform dedicated for CFD education.

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0Vijay Mali2014-02-26 04:36

This is just a brief about what are the inputs required for setting up a problem in any CFD solver. The steps are not explained in detail as the idea is give you the list of inputs required. Feel free to comment or ask details about any of the step.